


College Kids

by mojokid



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Origin Story, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-05 00:27:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16357115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mojokid/pseuds/mojokid
Summary: College kids were impossible to talk to. They didn’t have offices. They didn’t have phones. No one at Dartmouth would give Casey any information about him, apart from one evidently senile man working in the academic office who seemed to think Casey was Dan’s father, and had zero understanding of confidentiality.‘He’s more than made up for all the classes he missed in his first semester,’ he said brightly down the phone. ‘Don’t you worry about your boy.’





	College Kids

**Author's Note:**

> It's a how-they-might've-met story! Another old one I posted on livejournal back in the day.

‘You should see this.’ Pete Ryan was leaning in the door of Casey’s office, a cup of coffee in one hand and a folded newspaper in the other. He tapped the newspaper against the doorframe.

Casey looked up. ‘See what?’

Pete crossed the office, and tossed the newspaper onto Casey’s desk. ‘Some kid down at Dartmouth wrote this piece for the college paper. About that hockey player.’

Casey looked at the paper. ‘The one who was killed?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So?’

‘You should read it.’ 

Casey rubbed his eyes and wondered if more coffee would kill him. For no good reason, he felt exhausted. ‘I should read it,’ he said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Don’t I have better things to do?’

‘No.’ Pete shook his head. ‘Trust me, Casey. This kid’s like a sophomore in college, and I swear to God, this is the best sports writing I’ve read in – I have no idea. A long time.’ 

Casey squinted at him. Pete was twenty years older than Casey, an old-time sportswriter who didn’t seem to care that he’d landed up writing copy for a nothing news and sports show in northern Vermont. He liked Vermont. Casey hated it. 

‘I don’t have time to read an obituary in a college paper, Pete,’ said Casey.

‘It’s not an obituary,’ Pete said. ‘It’s sports writing. You’ve got time. Trust me.’

‘Why do you even have this?’

Pete shrugged. ‘It’s getting passed around. My niece started Dartmouth last year. It’s got some people talking.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘A hundred bucks someone buys the right to reprint it before the end of the month.’ 

Casey flipped the paper open, looked down at a grainy photo of a hockey player on the ice, his stick raised in celebration. Underneath, it said _Alexander Novak, 1968-1988._

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Fine. You get me another coffee from wherever you got the one you’re holding, I’ll read your article. Then I have to talk to you about lacrosse.’

Pete grinned. ‘Deal. Black, no sugar?’

‘Right.’ 

Pete backed out of the office and closed the door, and Casey looked at the photo again. 

Alex Novak had been a forward for Dartmouth men’s hockey. A hockey team no one really cared about, but ’87-’88 had been a comeback season for them, and Alex Novak had been at the heart of it. A couple of weeks ago, nineteen years old, he’d gotten drunk with some guys from the team, wrapped his car around a stop sign, been killed outright. The story had gotten some coverage outside of New Hampshire. Kind of a warning story, cue for some hand-wringing about college kids and alcohol. Casey hadn’t covered it. Hadn’t had anything new to say. 

Casey read the first sentence. _Alex Novak is nineteen years old in November when he equalises and then takes the lead against Boston College._

*

By the time Casey read the last sentence, his throat was tight and there was a pressure behind his eyes, an accretion of tears, out of nowhere. He was glad that Pete had closed his door.

The last sentence was this: _Alex skated his way to victory on April 7th, two days before he died; it was the final game before the playoffs, and when the whistle blew the future looked very bright._ Casey wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt, and looked up. Outside he suddenly heard traffic and birds and weather again, coming back into range like a retuned radio. He looked down and started to reread the article. When Pete came back into the office with his coffee, Casey looked at him and said, ‘Jesus.’

Pete grinned. ‘Told you.’

‘This article. This article.’

‘Kid can write, huh?’

‘A college student wrote this?’

‘Yep. Bet he’s a jackass. Damn good writer.’

‘We should – Pete. We should find him. We should get him to work for us.’

Pete laughed. ‘Sure, Casey,’ he said. ‘I’m sure that’s his dream come true. Right out of Dartmouth, he’s gonna come all the way over here and do local news and sports. He’s not going to work in TV, Casey. This kid is writing _literature._ ’

‘Maybe.’ 

Pete was low-ambition these days, liked his life, was quietly, contentedly amused by the machinations of local TV. But Casey had plans, lists written on the back of napkins. He’d sent tapes out to stations in New York, California, Texas. He’d done a lot of hours on camera in a lot of different places since college, and sometimes he got offers. Talk shows, sports shows, minor league stuff, but Casey knew something bigger was coming. ‘Maybe,’ he said again. ‘I’m going to try and call him.’

Pete grinned again. ‘I said to Melissa over breakfast this morning. I read this article and I said, “Casey McCall in my office is going to go nuts over this piece.”’

‘Well,’ Casey said. ‘You were right. Give me my coffee and leave me alone.’

Pete put a stained coffee mug down hard, sloshing some of its contents over the side. ‘Fine,’ he said, laughing. ‘I want my paper back.’

‘Let me give it back later,’ Casey said. ‘I want to make copies.’

Pete rolled his eyes. ‘Maybe you should see if he wants you as his agent.’

‘Maybe I should,’ Casey said. ‘Maybe I should see if he wants your job.’ 

As Pete departed, Casey called out, ‘Hey, tell Chris I need until Friday with the lacrosse thing. Tell him something’s come up.’

Something had come up. Casey didn’t know what, exactly, except that he felt flooded with energy, not artificial or caffeinated, but real, organic energy. The way people maybe felt when they saw the Grand Canyon. A piece in a college newspaper.

The article made him want to get in his car and drive to the nearest hockey game anywhere. If Casey ever died, he wanted someone to write something like this about him. 

He scanned back up to the top of the article. ‘By Daniel Rydell’ was written in innocuous little letters beneath the title. 

Casey said it aloud in his empty office. Daniel Rydell. It already sounded familiar.

*

College kids were impossible to talk to. They didn’t have offices. They didn’t have phones. No one at Dartmouth would give Casey any information about him, apart from one evidently senile man working in the academic office who seemed to think Casey was Dan’s father, and had zero understanding of confidentiality.

‘He’s more than made up for all the classes he missed in his first semester,’ he said brightly down the phone. ‘Don’t you worry about your boy.’

‘Do you know how I can contact him?’ Casey said. ‘Is there a public phone in his dorm?’

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ he said. ‘I can tell you about his grades.’

‘Please don’t,’ said Casey, and got off the phone as quickly as possible. 

That was how he came to be standing in a college dorm at eleven thirty at night, having driven all the way to Hanover, hammering on the door of some kid he’d never spoken to, feeling like he was about to meet Ernest Hemingway. 

Casey was only a few years older than the kids milling around, skulking in doorways and sitting on the stairs with biology textbooks, but he felt ancient. He was a guy with an apartment, now. An apartment and a full-time job and a girlfriend who was going to be his wife. 

The guy who opened the door was not Ernest Hemmingway. He was a skinny nineteen-year-old college kid with a pen in his mouth wearing a faded Mets t-shirt. ‘What?’ he said, when he opened the door. He took the pen out of his mouth. ‘Tell Mike I’m not giving the lecture notes to anybody else. Go to the damn lecture yourself.’ 

‘I’m not –’

‘Anybody else wants the lecture notes, they have to _pay_ me, okay?’ 

‘I don’t want the lecture notes,’ said Casey.

‘Oh,’ said Dan, and frowned. ‘Then you’re an idiot, because it covered everything that’s going to be on the final.’ 

‘I don’t –’

‘Look, you can copy them if you want, but you have to do it in my room, I’m not letting anybody else take them away. I have to learn this stuff too, you know. Just because I’m not a moron like Mike Kerrigan doesn’t mean I don’t have to _study_ , you know?’ 

‘Are you Daniel Rydell?’ 

The kid paused, and then his eyes went narrow and he took a step back, one hand braced against the door like he might slam it in Casey’s face. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m Dan. Who are you?’

‘My name’s Casey McCall.’

‘Are you a friend of Mike’s?’

‘No, I’m – no. I don’t go here. I’m not in college.’ 

Dan’s face was a mask, now, completely closed. He had reorganised his expression like he suddenly expected to be given terrible news. Casey remembered that he was clutching a copy of the article, and held it up. ‘Did you write this?’ Casey said.

Dan stared for a long time, first at the article, and then at Casey, and then back at the article. ‘Uh,’ he said. ‘Yes? I guess so?’ 

‘I read it this morning. I live in Vermont. I work for a local news channel. Sports.’ Casey sought for some way to explain his presence, but couldn’t find anything satisfactory. Dan stood still, pen in his hand. He had brown hair and tired eyes and the complexion of someone who spent too long studying. He looked young, but not so young Casey didn’t feel like they could be friends. ‘Don’t ask me how, but your college newspaper is circling in Vermont, and someone told me to read your article. And I did. And I just wanted to meet you and tell you that I really liked it. I really liked it a lot, Dan. Can I call you Dan?’

Dan blinked. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Have you lost your mind?’

‘I’m serious.’

‘So am I. Do you need help? Should I call someone to help you?’

They ended up in an empty campus cafeteria with self-service coffee machines that were on all night. Casey sat across from Dan in a corner booth and wrapped his hands around a white mug. ‘Do people steal the mugs from this place?’ Casey said. ‘I’m surprised they leave it open all night.’

‘Yes,’ said Dan. ‘They steal the mugs.’

‘Listen,’ said Casey. ‘I should make it clear. I’m not a serial killer or anything.’

‘I’m relieved.’

‘I’m a respectable guy. I have an apartment and a job and a girlfriend. I’m not some guy who saw your name in a newspaper and came here to kill you.’

‘Okay.’

‘You ever have a ball player or something, you saw him play and then you thought you’d do anything on earth just to be able to shake his hand?’

‘I guess.’

‘I kind of had that experience when I read your article.’

Dan looked incredulous. Casey couldn’t blame him. ‘I haven’t had a lot of sleep lately,’ he added. ‘That may have been a factor.’ 

‘Uh huh.’

‘It was the right time for me to read it. Do you know what I mean? Like, the stars aligned.’

‘You’re not, like—on a bad trip or something, right now?’ said Dan.

‘No.’

‘A good trip?’

‘I’m fine.’ 

Dan sipped his coffee, and said, in a careful voice, ‘You work in sports?’

‘Yeah. Kind of. I’m just starting out. Kind of building some experience at a local level, getting contacts—’

Dan’s eyes glazed over. Adult, working life, Casey remembered, was mostly abstract when you were still in college.

‘Anyway.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Your article just reminded me why I want to do this. What it’s about. Journalism.’

Dan shook his head slowly. ‘It’s the Dartmouth college paper. It’s not exactly journalism. I don’t even _work_ for the paper. I just wrote it because somebody asked me to. Somebody who knew I’d been to the games.’

The xeroxed copy was lying on the table between them, Alex Novak’s photograph at the centre.

‘Did you know him?’

Dan blinked, looked down at the picture. ‘No.’

‘The way you wrote it – I thought maybe he was your friend or something.’

‘No. I never met him. I saw him play.’

‘You’re a big hockey fan?’

Dan shrugged. ‘I’m a sports fan. Hockey, baseball, boxing, whatever. Hockey’s okay.’

‘I thought you must be a big hockey fan. The way you wrote this.’ 

‘I like sports,’ Dan said. ‘I really like sports.’ 

‘Me too.’ Casey tried his coffee. It tasted better than the stuff in his office. Dartmouth was a good school. ‘I guess everyone around here is still pretty cut up about what happened.’

‘To Alex?’ said Dan.

‘Yeah.’

Dan shrugged one shoulder, slouched in the booth and looked at the back of his hands. ‘It’s just the shock,’ he said. ‘People are just shocked. Half the kids here never knew anybody who died before.’

They were silent for a moment. Casey realised he hadn’t called Lisa all day. 

‘So, listen,’ he said. ‘You should drop out of school and come and work for this news station I work at in Vermont.’

Dan laughed.

‘I’m serious,’ Casey said. ‘I have no idea why I came all the way here, except that I want to do something with you, I want to work with you or something.’

‘Are you having a mid-life crisis?’

‘I’m only twenty-three.’

Dan grinned. ‘And I’m only nineteen. I haven’t even declared a major yet. You want to _work_ with me? I think you’re having some kind of breakdown, man.’

Casey couldn’t help grinning back. ‘That’s possible,’ he said. ‘I just know that you’re really talented. And I’m planning on having a big career in sports. I don’t want you to be my competition.’ 

‘You’re crazy,’ said Dan. ‘You are. Totally crazy. I’m flattered you liked the article, but I have papers to write, I have finals to sit. I’m not anybody’s competition. I’m not anybody.’

‘You’re going to be,’ Casey said. ‘You’re going to be, and so am I.’

‘Okay, well.’ Dan sat back and folded his arms, gave a lopsided smile. ‘Thanks for the heads up.’

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Do you need any help? With what you’re gonna do with your life? I mean, I know some people. I’ve got some contacts. Not great contacts, but – you know. I could send this out to some people.’ He jabbed a finger at the sheets of paper on the table. ‘I know some people who would really love to see writing like this.’

Dan frowned. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘How come?’

There was a long pause. Dan’s eyes scanned the dark windows of the cafeteria. Casey remembered himself at nineteen, alone at college. It was the time of his life. Dan didn’t seem like he was having the time of his life. ‘I know I never knew him,’ Dan said finally, ‘but the guy just died. I wrote the article because I saw him play hockey and I wanted people to remember that. I don’t want it to be like – I don’t want good things to happen to me because of someone dying.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay. I get that. But listen. Listen.’ He didn’t know what he going to say. ‘Sometimes you can’t control what happens. Sometimes good things happen out of bad things. It’s no one’s fault. It happens.’

‘I don’t want it to happen to me.’

‘Well, you might be out of luck there, ‘cause I think something good has already happened.’

Dan looked at him cautiously. ‘What?’

‘You met me.’ Casey smiled at him, and then heard himself laugh. ‘You met me. I met you. I think this is going to be a good thing.’

Dan raised an eyebrow. There was a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, in spite of himself and his college-cool detachment, his strange sadness. 

‘I mean it, Danny,’ Casey said. 

‘Dan,’ he said. ‘It’s Dan.’

‘Right, sorry.’ Casey put down his coffee and rubbed his eyes, still smiling. ‘Look, I should go. This is – I’m having a very weird day.’

‘At this point, so am I.’

‘I can imagine. So, I should go. I should go home. My fiancée is going to be mad as hell at me. You’ve got papers to write. And apparently a lot of people want to copy your lecture notes.’

‘Assholes,’ Dan said. 

‘So you should give me your number. You should give me a way I can get hold of you.’

‘I should?’

‘What do you want to do when you get out of school?’

‘I don’t know,’ Dan said. ‘I haven’t thought that far ahead.’

‘We should stay in touch.’ 

‘We should?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘I have no idea.’ Casey shook his head. ‘I have no idea. But we should. I read this article, Danny. I read this article. I drove all the way down here. I can’t explain.’

‘Things must be pretty dull in Vermont, huh?’

‘Some of the time. But sports can be exciting anywhere, right?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘Anyway, I don’t plan on being there that long.’

‘You’re going to be somebody.’

A late-night buzz of elation. Casey felt the truth of it, grinned like an idiot. ‘I’m going to be somebody.’

‘Well, I’ll keep an eye out for you. I’m pretty sure I’ll remember you. I never met anyone called Casey before.’

‘You won’t have to remember me,’ Casey said. ‘You’re going to know me. We’re going to be friends, Dan. I know it. Trust me. We’re going to be really good friends.’

‘You make it sound like a threat,’ said Dan, shaking his head. And Casey was laughing, then, couldn’t stop himself. He was buzzing. He was psyched. He had never felt more awake.

*

Five years later, they are in Texas. Casey catches himself, sometimes, trying to figure out how the hell it happened: looking across the desk at Dan, barely out of college, in the first custom-made suit he’s ever owned, lit by studio lights and improvising commentary on the highlights of a Cowboys game he hasn’t seen, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Five minutes before every show Dan’s hands still shake, and he has to get drunk afterwards just to come down from the adrenaline, but he’s getting better. They both are.

The things Casey hadn’t known that night in the Dartmouth cafeteria. That Danny knew more about baseball than anyone Casey had ever met, would ever meet. That Danny was still blindsided by grief, was still unmade by it every day, wouldn’t be able to tell Casey about his brother for two years and even then wouldn’t be able to tell him everything. That Danny hated soccer. Loved sailing. Wanted to be famous. Couldn’t talk on the phone. Casey found it all out in increments, each little bit making sense of him.

And now they are in Texas, doing their own show. It’s the good thing that Dan didn’t want to happen, because someone had died. 

Casey keeps the copy of Dan’s article, folded up small, worn as an ancient dollar bill, tucked in his wallet. He’d never tell Dan this, but every now and then he raises a glass, a silent toast: Alexander Novak, nineteen years old forever. _I’m sorry_ , he thinks, picturing the kid on the ice with his stick raised. _I’m so sorry. Thank you._


End file.
